In Chapter 2, the narrator describes the impassioned style he always had when playing the piano, even as a young child. To emphasize the magic of his playing, he personifies the piano itself:
I always played with feeling. Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals which makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument; quite a different thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is. I think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament, but largely to the fact that I did not begin to learn the piano by counting out exercises, but by trying to reproduce the quaint songs which my mother used to sing, with all their pathetic turns and cadences.
A piano is an inanimate object, but the narrator suggests that he can turn it into a human-like creature that is "sympathetic." He imagines that it expresses itself through "singing," another human action. The narrator acknowledges some of the technical skill that goes into producing this effect: for instance, he uses the pedals to dampen certain notes or hold the reverberations from others. But he also argues that a lack of traditional technical training when he first started playing is just as responsible for his ability to make the piano sing. Instead of performing drills to learn proper placement of his fingers on the keys or traditional chord progressions, he played around with reproducing the songs he heard his mother sing. By improvising and reproducing by ear the intimate sound of his mother's voice, the narrator learns first to create feeling and "sympathy" with the piano and only afterward to use it "correctly," as an inanimate tool.
The primacy of feeling and voice in the narrator's piano playing, rather than technique and written music, reflects his connection to Black culture and music. Call and response, improvisation, and emotion are all fundamental components of Black musical styles, such as spirituals, jazz, and ragtime. Written music, and the idea that there is a strictly proper way to use an instrument, is much more European. The narrator eventually chooses to pass for white and does not even realize for the first several years of his life that he is Black. Nonetheless, his musical instincts and preferences suggest an innate appreciation for Black culture.
